a little mystery

Over on the HGTV message boards, in the quilting and sewing section, the participants come up with all kinds of things to keep your interest up. They have a variety of swaps, such as nickels (5" squares), I Spy charms (little squares of a designated size with character or novelty type prints suitable for an I Spy quilt), postcards (made of fabric and suitable for mailing), and whatever anyone thinks up that they'd like a variety of, like vintage sheet squares.

For those interested in paper-piecing, there's a project underway that every few weeks you're given instructions for the next round. A lot of people take advantage of these as a good way to learn a new method in an encouraging environment.

And of course there's the secret sister group. I'm in that this year for the first time. The hardest part about that one is that if you post pictures of what you're sending to the LSS (little secret sister), they can guess pretty quickly who their BSS (big secret sister) is. So I'm making things to go in that direction, but can't really post about them.

On New Years Day, there was a mystery quilt up on the board, and instructions were given ahead of time on the amount of fabric you'd need, as well as the cutting instructions. While it called for batik prints, you of course were free to use whatever you chose. Then hourly new postings came up with links to directions for the next part. I had my fabrics chosen and printed out the instructions, but didn't get started on it till a day or two later. This week and weekend I made some more progress.

All was going well until I got to about my 6th round, and realized I'd made a mistake earlier. The pattern shows the focal fabric in the center, going out diagonally at each corner. I messed up, and my focus fabric on the diagonals were turned around. At the time I noticed, it was fixable, but thoughts came in that hey, there are no quilting police, and who's to know if I just leave it the way it is? Here's the mistake on one of the corners. The outer corner is okay, but as you go in diagonally you see the two light squares on the diagonal. That's wrong.

Now here's the way the corner should be. Much better for continuity and flow.


I did the right thing, and stepped away from it for awhile, and I'm glad I did. Coming back with a fresh attitude, I did some frog stitching (rip it, rip it), restitching correctly. I'd say it was worth it. Here's the finished top.
I may still add a border, then that will be about it. And I'll have to decide how to quilt it. Right now I like it well enough I may send it to my friend Ty to quilt on her long-arm quilting machine.